


Influence

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Compatible [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, Chuck Lives, Everybody Else Lives Too Actually, F/M, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven fragments from the career of Striker Eureka's young pilots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Influence

I.

A leatherworker from Melbourne gives them the boots, in the midst of the media frenzy after Spinejackal. Two identical pairs, but for the size difference, in olive leather with buckles up the sides and steel at the toes and shins. They're gorgeous, and Chuck is chuffed, but Mako bows to the leatherworker again and again, admiring the craftsmanship, the softness of the leather.

It's just a fluke that they destroyed everything on that block except the guy's workshop, but hey, no one's ever given them anything that cool before. Now when they move in lockstep through the halls of the Sydney Shatterdome, the glint and clink accompany them. Between the boots and their bomber jackets, the kills they stencil there after every drop, everyone knows who they are. You'd have to live under a rock to not know who they are.

They're the faces of the fucking future. They're going to save the world.

* * *

II.

The first thing he sees in the Drift, just before they go rip off Taurax's head, is Stacker Pentecost. Chuck has no way to know how old the memory is, but it feels recent--one of the last times Pentecost visited from Anchorage. The Marshal tells Mako he fears that her co-pilot may be a bad influence.

Chuck wonders if it had anything to do with her hair. Like that was his idea. 

Mako asks Pentecost, with her customary economy of words, a sentence as narrow as a blade, whether she's allowed to be a good influence. Pentecost stares at her for a long time, then asks, in Japanese (Chuck only knows this because the meaning is more clear, the words more nuanced and poetic), how many pebbles it takes to fill a well.

Well, that's just great, isn't it? That's a Zen fucking koan. Her Sensei is in the wrong line of work, ought to be at the top of a mountain instead of handling Jaeger jockeys. Chuck feels himself bristle in the Drift, and he feels Mako's endless calm in the memory. She tells Pentecost that she is not a pebble. The Marshal has nothing to say to that.

Chuck reminds her of when he graduated from the academy, and the Marshal tried to stick him with his old man. He said he'd wait. However long it took. A year, ten years. He wouldn't ride without her. Because he and she and Striker Eureka were all made for each other. Because this is how the Drift ought to be: smooth and free and so silent that LOCCENT has to do check-ins just to get them to speak.

They always fight well, always move as one, but that day they are some new creature made of her speed and his force and the fierce possessiveness they share, and they are there to protect not Mindanao and the world, but each other  _from_  the world, from anyone who doubts them, and Taurax never knows what hit it.

* * *

III.

They only finish their sparring matches if the Marshal is watching. Otherwise they never make it to four strikes; every time Mako pins him, twists his arm behind his back or plants her knee on his chest, Chuck gets excited, and that goes double if she bloodies his nose, which doesn't happen if the Marshal is watching. Mako can read it on his face as clearly as if they were in the Drift, and it's just a matter of how soon she'll get bored of kicking his ass, and shove him off the mat and down the hall instead, where they'll slam the hatch to her room (not his--It's too weird with Max there) and she'll hold him down again.

* * *

IV.

The reporter gets a smarmy look on her face and says there are all kinds of rumors about the two of them. It's not really a question, but answering isn't optional. This is the part in every interview where Mako's face turns to stone and she says even less than usual, because whose fucking business is it anyway, so it's Chuck's job to look embarrassed for the camera.

He says Mako is his best friend. He says she makes him a better person. He says there's a bond between Jaeger pilots that's more than attraction, more than romance. Deeper. It's different, it's--

Pure.

People love it when they finish each other's sentences. 

* * *

V.

And then everything goes to shit and Striker gets decommissioned and the next day when they put a volley of AKMs into Mutavore, Chuck imagines they're firing at one of the suits that killed the Jaeger program. It's a clean fight but it doesn't last nearly long enough, and Mako brushes against him before they disengage and promises to make it up to him later. And after decontamination and debriefing and decomissioning Striker yet again, he sets his boots next to Mako's under the little shelf that holds her red shoes, and he spends their last night in Sydney beneath her.

He has fresh bruises when they arrive in Hong Kong.

* * *

 VI.

Pentecost dredges everything he can get, including Chuck's old man from retirement, a washed-up Becket, and a Mark III restored by Tendo. And it's a good job he does, because they may be a few years out of practice, but Chuck watches them box in the Kwoon and it's good, and without them Cherno Alpha would be toast, and when Leatherback's pulse knocks out Striker and Crimson Typhoon, Gipsy Danger keeps throwing punches. 

Chuck and Mako climb up on top of the Conn-Pod for a better view, and Chuck should not be getting turned on by this, and certainly not when he's in his drivesuit and can't do anything about it for hours, but Mako's hand is on the back of his neck and she knows exactly what he's feeling. It's like watching a John Wayne movie. 

* * *

 VII.

When Gottlieb and Geiszler tell them how to fool the Breach, Chuck just grins at Mako. This is going to be great.

Scunner is down in minutes, but it takes them and Crimson and Gipsy together to kill Slattern, while Cherno finishes off Raiju. Chuck grasps Slattern's head as Mako uses the left Sting-Blade like a surgeon. Together they reach back gingerly, release the payload, and tuck it into Slattern's ragged corpse. They shove it into the Breach and wait until the point of no return, the last place in the throat where their signal is guaranteed to reach, before they detonate it.

Four Jaegers, dinged up and wet and moving a little stiff, walk back to Victoria Bay. Striker brings up the rear, dragging Scunner; Mako insists on a thank you gift for Newt. 

There's a party that night. That's an understatement--there's a party everywhere that night, but the one in the the mess hall is definitely the smallest and happiest and most exclusive, and Chuck stands in the middle of it with his arm around Mako's shoulders and never lets go, even under the Marshal's gaze. The Shatterdome is a clean-living, wheatgrass smoothie kind of place under normal circumstances, but the Kaidanovskys have broken out their stash, and Chuck drinks enough of it to make people think Mako is holding him up.

But when their eyes meet, he knows she can see the fear in his. No Breach, no kaiju, no Striker, no fights, no Drift--if he lets go of her, the soles of his boots will leave the floor and the earth's rotation will fling him away. So she looks up at him with the most profound and fathomless understanding, and she holds him down.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how this turned into Chuck-getting-off-when-Mako-pushes-him-around (it probably has to do with this: http://vulcanspectre.tumblr.com/post/60181582958/welcome-to-fight-club-full-view-please-wanted), but I decided to roll with it.


End file.
